


Eagle One

by caravanslost



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 19:24:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3458969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caravanslost/pseuds/caravanslost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"From now on, we will be using code names. You can address me as Eagle One".</p><p>Or, Mats watches Parks and Recreation and starts thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eagle One

**Author's Note:**

> If you've never watched Parks and Recreation, you might wanna watch [this brief thirty second video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD39sMJBbc4) to understand what's going on.
> 
> I don't even know where this one came from, tbh.

If Mats was Eagle One, ‘been there done’ that was Lewy. Once.

Lewy was the only other person in any room who could draw people’s eyes away from Mats. Not that Mats minded, because hell, he was looking right along with the rest of them. The moment he had laid eyes on Lewy, Mats guessed that they’d end up in each other’s beds. And then Lewy had laid eyes back on him, and smiled like he was thinking the exact same thing, like they had shared a secret before exchanging a single word.

Lewy’s hand always stayed just a little too long on Mats’ elbow. His eyes lingered a little too long on Mats’ body when they were changing, and his lips hovered a little too close to Mats’ ears when telling him things in crowds and quiet rooms. Mats would look at him like _I know what you’re doing_ , and Lewy would keep doing it anyway, because that was Lewy, deliberate and unrepentant.

For every step Mats took towards him, Lewy took three steps back. Mats kept walking anyway, and one night, he found himself walking into Lewy’s room.

Lewy fucked Mats like he would break him in three. Mats got down on his knees without being asked and Lewy taunted him with a dozen nos for every yes. He pulled at Mats’ hair, left him raw, warned that his body would ache for a week in every place that Lewy had touched him. He adorned Mats’ neck with bite-marks and then refused to give him a scarf for the walk back to his room. He grafted crimson scratches down Mats’ back and had the gall to ask him who was responsible for them in the lockers the next day, in front of everyone. And everyone _knew_.

If Mats was Eagle One, ‘been there done that’ was Lewy, and Mats suspected that given the opportunity, he’d probably do it again.

* * *

‘Currently doing that’ was Benni.

Benni was like a sunrise on the other side of the bed, bright and completely oblivious to the warmth and light that he gave off. He would stand in front of the mirror worrying about where his hair used to be, and Mats would kiss him and offer to shave off his own hair in solidarity. Benni would call him a liar and pull him in for grateful kisses anyway.

Benni was nights without sleep and comfortable silences and a love so strong, so warm, that sometimes being in his company ached just like it did when he was away. And Benni knew everything – absolutely _everything_ \- and told him to invite Lewy around one night so that he could see what all the fuss was about. Then he spent an hour laughing at the stone-cold shock on Mats’s face, and the next month laughing at the memory of it.

‘Currently doing that’ was Benni, and Mats wasn’t a religious man or anything, but when he prayed once or twice a year at Christmas and Easter mass, he gave thanks for Benni. 

* * *

‘It happened once in a dream’ was Erik.

They had lost to Bayern and every single one of them was hurting, but Klopp pulled Mats aside because Erik was blaming himself and needed particular looking after. Mats went to his room that night and heaped wisdom onto his deaf, youthful ears, watching as Erik tried to put on a brave face for him, even though he was blinking way too fast and speaking in whispers.

And Mats knew. Mats knew because he had seen that look in his own reflection that night, so he gathered Erik in his arms and held him till the kid let himself cry. Erik heaved shuddering sobs into his shoulder, his body shaking under the force of his frustration. Mats held him and said that it was never a single person’s fault, and promised him the kind of redemption in the next match that no one could guarantee.

Mats eventually went back to his own room to nurse his own misery, and that night he dreamed strange dreams. He dreamed about Erik and victories and empty locker rooms. He dreamed about Erik’s body backed against his locker, cheeks and lips stained red with desire, his spine arched against the cold metal, fingers weaving knots in Mats’ hair because there was nothing else to hold him steady. Mats tasted him and pulled rattled breaths from between his lips, and Erik might have had the face of an angel but Mats took him apart like a man.

Mats woke up hard and he didn’t know why. He didn’t remember anything about the dream. He showered and ate breakfast as usual and went about his day. It was only half a week later, when Erik took off his shirt during training because it was too hot, that images of locker rooms and victories and red lips come back to him. Mats couldn’t look Erik in the eye for the rest of the day.

‘It happened once in a dream’ was Erik. And if Mats was being honest with himself, it happened a few more times in daydreams after that.

* * *

‘If I had to pick’ was Marco.

He would pick Marco because Marco paid the kind of attention that made you feel like the only person in a crowded room. His smiles didn’t come cheap or frequently, so no matter how you felt about him, they had a way of making your heart work a double-shift. And Marco was physically affectionate too – so much so that it was difficult not to want more of it, and more of him. Marco grabbed onto Mats after each victory and held him and pressed their foreheads together, because when Marco decided he wanted to show love, he was going to do it, whether they were alone or whether a dozen cameras were pointed in their direction.

Mats would pick Marco because of his irresistible confidence, because he thought he was invincible even when he was broken, because of the tenderness he concealed thinly behind his sneer and the skew in his smile. Mats never usually cared about impressing anyone but he wanted to impress _him_ , mostly because he was just so damn hard to impress.

But whether Mats would pick him or not, Marco’s heart was elsewhere, so Marco was Eagle Two.

The night Mario told him he was leaving for Munich, Marco had turned up unannounced at Mats’ flat. He cried like Mats had never seen a grown man cry before, till he cried himself into an exhausted sleep. That night, Mats became witness to the sheer bloody-mindedness of Marco’s devotion to someone else, watched it trouble his slumber as he threw a blanket over him, watched it haunt him over dark, sugarless coffee the next morning.

And besides – Marco was a good Eagle Two.

He carried the team’s burdens on his shoulders more heavily than anyone else, and he would call a spade a spade and then smack you in the face with it. He told Mats that his hair was messy when others called it tousled, and told him to shave when others praised his five o’clock shadow. He told Mats that his nose was too big, just to keep him humble, even though it obviously wasn’t, and even though he happily admitted that his own nose was bigger.

Mats would pick Marco, but he recognized the battles he couldn’t win, so he didn't fight them, and Marco stayed Eagle Two. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Kudos, comments, concrit and cookies are all most welcome and appreciated ^_^


End file.
